The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town

The legend of Simon of Trent ascribed the murder of a young boy in the northern Italian city of Trent in the 15th century to a ritual murder carried out by the city’s Jews. Simon was venerated as a martyr for centuries, and a graphic depiction of the martyred child was installed under the bridge tower in Frankfurt, Germany. Although in 1609 the city’s Jews petitioned to have the painting removed, the city council rejected the plea and the painting remained in place until the late 18th century, where poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe saw it as a child (106). Goethe describes its effect on him as gruesome and forbidding, and it “encouraged his initial aversion to the Jewish quarters” (106). The painting serves as a powerful symbol of the ritual murder myth as it persisted for centuries in the minds of many Christians.

This is another physical symbol of the Jewish ritual murder legend as it lodged in the minds of many Christians. The legend of Judenstein recounted that a boy in Rinn, Germany, named Andreas Oxner was killed by traveling merchants in a forest in 1462. Suspicion did not fall on the Jews at first, but after the legend of Simon of Trent became known several years later, townspeople became convinced that the Jews had ritually tortured Andreas on a “Jew stone.” A shrine grew up around Andreas’s remains and the Holy See approved the cult.